


But Never Meant to Last

by eyemeohmy



Category: Moon (2009)
Genre: Angst, Cuddling, Gen, General spoilers, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyemeohmy/pseuds/eyemeohmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nor would he tell him that at this moment, he wished they could come together, become one. So they could both be happy, they could both go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Never Meant to Last

**Author's Note:**

> Bit of an older piece I decided to throw here, too. I just wanted this to happen during the tuck-Sam-into-bed scene. ;_; Title of this fic is a lyric from The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine.
> 
> Additional notes: contains spoilers for the movie, of course; mild profanity; um, there's cuddling, but it's (mostly?) platonic; gratuitous artistic liberty with Sam Bell's history/past.

Sam Bell had seen only a scarce few tragedies in his lifetime. He was an ordinary person in that regard; one who was lucky to know natural loss. His father's funeral, his mother's struggle with cancer before it finally reached remission. The other losses were not entirely physical, but the pain was equally harsh. The fights with his beloved wife, the three year mission to the moon taking him from his daughter. Three years dreaming of the past, of better and happier times. Watching his baby in his arms as he rocked her to sleep and calmed her cries; her giggles as Sam held her up to bathe in the sunlight. Though his sorrows were few, they still weighed heavily on him. 

At least, for the original Sam Bell.

The clones... Well, they knew the tragedies and missed opportunities. Though not to the same extent; not really. They could share the same sadness, anger, and loss as their original, the very first and the only real Sam Bell, but they couldn't fully comprehend the impact they had.

Yet at the same time, Sam wondered if it was almost a mockery to his creator, the man whose face he wore and memories he shared. As if he were not meant to carry this burden; as if he were taking something from the first Sam. A computer downloading information without truly experiencing or relating to it. It was cruel and terrible in all aspects that a man should live through these struggles and losses not once but apparently six times over. Like removing threads from a great tapestry; unwinding hard work; sweat, blood, tears, everything. Knitting it all back together just wouldn't be the same.

Of all the sadness, frustration, and pain Sam Bell--no, his clone, his _sixth_ clone--carried, none of it was real. He was sure that many memories of Sam's past had been omitted throughout the cloning process. His predecessor, the fifth clone--he knew of Eve, loved her dearly. Yet she sounded almost... foreign to Sam 6. As if the bond between them was frayed and worn out.

This, however. This pain was all his own. The original Sam Bell would never know it. This was his, the sixth clone's very own misery that he'd treasure in a morbid way when nothing else about him was his and his alone.

The fifth clone was dying. It was a slow deterioration that reminded Sam 5 of the memories of Sam Bell's mother. Her days of sickness and struggle and fear, how she looked so hollow and lost. However, she survived all that. Sam 6 knew somewhere in the dark reaches of his mind that Sam 5 probably wouldn't be so lucky.

After Sam 6 tucked his clone into bed, he turned to leave. Turned to put his macabre, disgusting plan into motion that would surely shame his creator. However, before he could go, his predecessor pulled at his sleeve, yanking him back weakly.

"D-Don't go."

Sam 6 blinked and looked back at Sam 5. The most pathetic expression on his bruised and beaten face. "P-Please," Sam 5 swallowed, licked his cracked lips. There was fear in his milky eyes. "Don't go."

"I need to," Sam 6 insisted. "I have to--"

"They won't be here... N-Not for a few more hours," Sam 5 interjected. He tugged on Sam 6's sleeve still in his shaky fingers. "I. I need... I need this."

Sam 6 wondered what had happened while the two were separated, out exploring the limits of their transmissions and if they could be broken. The towers they found like hidden giants mocking them from afar. What brought on the sudden increase of suffering in his twin when he returned; the same, mysterious dread Sam 6 saw in his glistening eyes, deepening the wrinkles around his frown. The look of a man who Death had touched, but not directly.

Sam 5 knew something he didn't. He should have asked him what. Should have told him that dawdling and hesitating would only set them back. You want to go home, right? And yet... 

The clone in front of Sam 6 had the same eyes--his eyes. They all did. Yet it wasn't Sam 5's he saw right now. Rather, a distant memory of holding Eve in his arms; the way he smiled when his daughter's eyes opened for the first time. _She has my eyes_. No, it wasn't Sam 5 he was seeing--it was Eve. And the hurt and pain in those eyes completely broke his heart.

Sam 6 stepped back. The older clone shifted and wiggled aside, cocooned in his massive blanket. Sam 6 slipped in beside him; the bed was small, cramped, but it was what Sam 5 needed. The fifth clone sealed any remaining space between them, pressed his body against his successor's. Sam 6 felt a little awkward, a bit uncomfortable, but didn't move, didn't push him away.

Sam 5 pulled his blankets to his chin, resting his head against Sam 6's shoulder. "S-So cold," he stammered, teeth chattering.

Sam 6 reached over, placed the back of two fingers against the sickly clone's moist forehead. "You're burning up," he stated. "Funny how the body works."

" _Our_ bodies..." Sam 5 murmured, trailing off. His groggy tone was tinged with disgust. Sam 6 twitched; this wasn't like his predecessor, who clung so blindly to the idea he was the _real_ Sam Bell, or at least on the same mental and emotional level as the original. Reality was perhaps setting into his fever riddled brain.

They laid there in silence for a few minutes. Sam 5 curled up against his clone, clinging to him. Sam 6 quickly adjusted, some of the tension leaving his body. He sunk into the mattress; willing down the stress and frustration struggling to claw its way out. The original Sam had something of a bad temper--seemed Sam 6 had inherited that trait more predominately than anything else.

"I'm dying."

Sam 6 turned his head. He was face to face with his clone. He looked... horrible. Corpse-white with tissue-thin flesh, veins stretching like webbing across his temples, along his jawline. Bruised eyelids and dark gray and rusty yellow bags. Lips chapped and cracked and flushed slightly blue. His breathing labored, wheezing against Sam 6's cheek.

Sam 5 cracked his eyes open, met Sam 6's gaze. "'M'must look like shit. Won't be long now."

"No," Sam 6 replied. "You're not going to die."

Sam 5 smirked.

Anger swelled and brewed in Sam 6's chest, clenching tight around his heart. "Hey," he growled, " _you are not going to die_." He wasn't trying to sound reassuring or gentle. Sam 6 wouldn't let him die; he had to go home, had to live on for the both of them. For the original Sam Bell, for all the clones who expired before them, lonely and confused and scared.

Sam 5 frowned. He shifted, looking to the door. Outside that door was a world he'd come to despise. "Think it's genetic... Coded into our DNA... S-So after three years, we-we deteriorate. So we c-can be replaced..." He scrubbed his face with both hands, knuckles blue and purple, and sighed. "Might explain the hallucinations I had that morning. What drove me into... into the harvester." Sam 5 chortled bitterly. "Was losin' my mind, but not from the--the loneliness."

"You're going home. You're going to get better. You'll get the medical attention you need."

Sam 5 made a raspy noise--an attempt at laughter. "You think so? I-I'm suppose to be dead. If they got... If they got their hands on me, they'd just kill me. I can't live or I... I jeopardize _Lunar Industries_." He shut his eyes. "Just one man--a _clone_ \--against a multi-billion c-company that fuels more than h-half the world. I don't stand a chance."

"So, what do you want to do? Hmm?" Sam 6 moved away, abruptly and angrily. Sam 5 stared up at the younger clone, surprised. "Do you want to stay here? After all this time, those terrible fuckin' three years yearning for the life they took from you. Your pure Goddamn determination to see your family and friends--all you had, the only thing you had, keeping you from going batshit insane. Our plans, fuck, _everything_ \--And now you're resigning? You're giving up? You're just gonna curl up in a corner and die like some fucking wounded animal?"

Sam 5 frowned, chewing on the edge of his tongue a moment. He looked away.

"There's a chance you can be saved. You know that," Sam 6 continued. "Stop pitying yourself. You didn't survive this long by being a coward. This isn't your fate."

"Was it Bell's?" Sam 5 demanded, angry and defensive. He immediately felt dizzy, the rush of emotions heavy on his weary bones. "He... The logs... They..."

"Stop it."

Sam 5 shivered from more than the fever. Suddenly, Sam 6 was on his side, facing him again. Glowering, his eyes, the same color as his, radiating intensity. A will of fire and iron. He held Sam 5's face in his hands, and the older clone choked on a sigh.

"I'm serious," Sam 6 said. "You're going home. You're going to see your wife, your little girl. _Our_ wife, _our_ little girl. And you're going to love them not just for you, but for all the others who died before us. More love than Bell alone could ever give." The rage in his eyes faded. It felt like watching something die, and Sam 5's stomach somersaulted. "My love, too. Damn if I can't give it to them myself, you're going to do it for me." He frowned, jut out his chin. "You understand? _For all of us_."

Sam 5 felt like his heart had been torn in two, shredded into six pieces. Tears formed in his glassy eyes. He wanted to tell his successor everything. What the logs had shown, what GERTY had revealed. The shock and confusion in his daughter's eyes and the way she bowed her head ever so slightly when she told the man who claimed to be her dad that her mother, that her mother was...

"It'll happen..." Sam 5 swallowed dryly. He dropped his face into the hands holding him. "It'll happen to you, too. What is happening to me."

"That's fine," Sam 6 replied. He sounded sincere, but he was Sam 5 as Sam 5 was him. Sam 5 knew he was scared, furious. "You'll recover. You'll go on living. We'll find a way to stop this from happening to anyone else ever again."

"At this point, the most... The most merciful thing..." Sam 5 couldn't continue. To kill them all. To spare the other clones this same misery and suffering. It was... No. He couldn't do it. The idea that Sam 6 was going to try, just... He knew he wouldn't, because Sam 5 couldn't. They were the same, after all, but he said nothing in the end.

Sam 5 flinched when the blanket around him suddenly lifted. Sam 6 was crawling beneath it, pulling it over the both of them. Sam 5 gasped when the cold material of his clone's jumpsuit pressed against him. It warmed up rather quickly, however, his body heat engulfing the two. Sam 6 wrapped his arms around his predecessor, pulled him as close as possible. One hand reaching up to cradle the back of his head, guide it to rest against his chest beneath his chin. Sam 5 was breathing haggardly into the collar of his suit; Sam 6 felt the moist heat against his exposed throat, fluttering and tickling.

It was a silent reassurance. If words could not persuade Sam 5, then this would have to do. He would be okay, even if it meant he'd be leaving the others behind. Sam 6 would be okay, too, even if it hurt like Hell. Sam 5 did not react, not immediately; then slowly, heavy, tired arms were winding around Sam 6. Legs pushed feebly between his, until they were coiled up in each others limbs. The blanket tangled around them both.

Somehow this felt natural. Even with the sickness, with the awkwardness. It was as if this was how it was meant to be. And Sam 5 would never tell Sam 6 what he saw and what he was told before the younger clone returned. Nor would he tell him that at this moment, he wished they could come together, become one. So they could both be happy, they could both go home. Likewise, Sam 6 would never tell him he was thinking the same.

That maybe united, they would be closer to the real Sam Bell.

So please remember me, finally  
And all my uphill clawing  
My dear, but if I make the Pearly Gates  
I'll do my best to make a drawing  
**The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine**  



End file.
